This composite image of a galaxy illustrates how the intense gravity of a super massive black hole can be tapped to generate immense power. The image contains X-ray data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory (blue), optical light obtained...
This scientific visualization is much more than a dizzying dance of whirling worlds. It shows 2,299 planets found by NASA’s Kepler planet-hunting spacecraft.
Detecting alien worlds presents a significant challenge since they are small, faint, and close to their stars. The two most prolific techniques for finding exoplanets are radial velocity (looking for wobbling stars) and transits (looking...
In our solar system, only one planet is blessed with an ocean: Earth. Our home world is a rare, blue jewel compared to the deserts of Mercury, Venus and Mars. But what if our Sun...
Spiral galaxies are some of the most beautiful and photogenic residents of the universe. Our own Milky Way is a spiral. Our solar system and Earth reside somewhere near one of its filamentous arms. And...
Until now, supernovas came in two main “flavors.” A core-collapse supernova is the explosion of a star about 10 to 100 times as massive as our Sun, while a Type Ia supernova is the complete...
Imagine a sphere more than 2 million miles across – eight times the distance from Earth to the Moon – spinning so fast that its surface is traveling at nearly the speed of light. Such...
Science Spotlight
